Info I talked with Hugh at length yesterday because I was curious about the oil and gas mentioned in the article. Hite is currently out of town, so Hugh hasn't had a chance yet to discuss that possiblility with him (as he's had to field a few questions after the article was published), but he wasn't sure if our staking for potash would give us access to the oil and gas rights or not. It might be, but I'm not getting too excited about oil and gas just yet. I'll try and get a more definitive answer in a couple weeks at the Vancouver show. Unfortunately, Hite won't be there, but Walters will be.
Having said that, there's lots more reasons to be excited. Matt mentioned the forward progress that Netco is making and I am pretty excited to see some results from their chip samples taken out of the new veins at surface. Remember that there is a resource there and it is high enough grade and near surface enough to do direct ore shipping. With a brief period to prove up some more tonnage, its actually possible that they could be shipping high grade ore and bringing in cash flow as early as 3-4 years from now.
Nova is tight-lipped, but they'll have to hand us the assays eventually. Again, they're hopeful it will be sometime this month. Don't get too impatient, as they will take their sweet time logging the drill cores and building 3D models before handing anything over. I want the assays, but I'll breath a bigger sigh of relief when they announce that they're drilling again. To me, that's most important. If the economy and the markets stay tight, having them continue their work will buy us time and keep people interested during periods when other partners may not be forthcoming.
Today's acquisition is another reminder that we're sitting on a boat-load of potential mines. The odds of not having at least 2-3 winners is slim. If things heat up and juniors can raise cash again soon, we could wear out a Xerox machine printing up JV deals with new partners. We still have about a million and six in the bank, so we have some time to make forward progress without requiring dilution. Our burn rate is up somewhere between 60-80k a month right now, with room to slash if we need to. Personally, I don't think we'll have to. San Roque alone should bring us up to a respectable level to raise some cash and get some more balls rolling.
Good luck